Child-Friendliness: How do the French and the Italians Compare?

Availability of Public Daycare:

France – You, too, can leave your three-month old baby in a daycare five days per week, eleven hours per day, and not feel guilty about it.

Italy - Are you suffering from poverty of Dickensian proportions?

Sweets for children:

France: Friends and acquaintances whom you see in your home, in others' homes and in the park will often offer your little one juice, cakes, cookies or crackers, whether or not you would like your little one to eat sweets at that particular time.

Italy - Multiply offers of sweets by a factor of ten and include every time you step into the elevator and someone else is in it, all outings to a children's clothing store, and all visits to the bakery (fortunately, the bread in Italy is so bad that your child may actually reject what the baker offers him). Include therein chocolate, lollipops, hard candy and all the neon pink and green complete junk food that you can imagine. Expect the person offering the sweets to take umbrage should you refuse on your tot's behalf.

Toy Stores:

France – Toys R Us, Eveil & Jeux, La Grande Recrée, and numerous boutiques filled with wooden toys can be found in the city of Paris.

Italy – Imagine stores with half the selection of the Toys R Us but with the "plastic junk" factor multiplied by ten (Città del Sole being the exception.)

Comments in the Street Regarding One's Child:

In Paris – (Older French woman in ultra polite and modest tone, faint smile barely visible) "Vous avez un très beau bébé, madame", as she briskly passes by.

In Rome – (Older Italian woman in ecstatic voice, broad grin on face) "Che bella! Ciao, bellisima! Come si chiama? E Carena! Bellissima! Ciao bella! Ciao bella! Come ti chiami? Non capisci italiano? Ciao! Ciao!" (continue for a good five more minutes...).

Restaurants:

France - Your 2-year old will be welcomed with open arms into any restaurant and promptly seated right next to you at a table. Of course, her eyes will be at the level of the table, as the restaurant has no highchairs. That's okay, though. The fact that she is sitting at a lower level than the adults around her will enable her to avoid breathing in the wafts of cigarette smoke blown her way from every single other table in the restaurant. Your waiter will pass you a look of disdain as he collects the unfinished meal of your enfant reine.

Italy - Even a three-star Michelin restaurant will have a high chair available for your little one. And smoking has been banned indoors so no worries there, either. What is more, your waiter will be shocked and impressed that your two-year old is willing to eat the food that she is served, including some of the meat, the cheese and maybe even some veggies and the fruit served for dessert. His two-year old has refused to eat anything but pasta since she started solids at sixteen weeks.

Parks:

Paris - Besides the champs de mars and the fantastic jardin du luxembourg (carrousels, pony rides, at least 5 playareas with sandbox and/or equipment for small children, puppet theatre, fish pond), Paris has hundreds of little play areas dotting the city, each engineered to French mathematical perfection to fit into an area that is shaded from the sun between 15h00 and 18h00 every afternoon.

Rome - There is the Bioparco, the Cassina di Raffaello, the puppet theatre and cinema dei piccoli, all in the Villa Borghese. All good BUT only the Bioparco is suitable for children under 4. And the Villa Borghese, a park measuring a few square kilometres, has approximately (no, exactly) one half decent play area for children, right next to the Casina di Raffaello. No sandboxes anywhere.

Conclusion:

The French have better facilities for children, probably because in the French culture, children are traditionally expected to occupy their own space, separate from the adults, where they are seen not heard. Italy (or at least Rome) has fewer facilities available just for children (especially very small children), but my impression is that the Italians enjoy hanging out with children more than the French do.